Together
by Y.K.Willstone
Summary: Entry to the Eggheads competition round 2 - Andromeda and Ted as their final hours on the Express roll on by. Rated T because I'm paranoid


The Egghead challenge - Round No.2

This story is part if the Eggheads Competition Round 2. We were given a list of prompts and told to write a story linked with someone else (who was in our School (mine is Hogwarts)). My story is linked with Fire the Cannon (who didn't need an extension (which in itself merits an applause (their story is pretty brilliant too by the by).

My Prompts:

Ted/Andromeda  
A pendant  
Molly Weasley  
'I can't help you, I'm afraid'  
Rise

* * *

The final journey on the Hogwarts Express was not something that you had been looking forwards too. There was a sort of finality to the words 'the last trip', a finality that you didn't like; the final time that you and your sisters might cross paths, the final time that you will see all of your old friends, the final time that you might catch a glimpse at the tall towers that made up Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

He's sitting opposite you, legs folded under himself, vacant expression on his face, not really reading the book that he holds in his hands. His hair is slightly messed up from the endless hugs that his housemates, the Gryffindors, had given to him as he boarded the train. They had known that he would be sitting with her, the Slytherin girl who wasn't welcome into her own dormitory anymore. House rivalry required that no matter you were in a relationship, even though he was the quidditch captain for three whole, successful, years. You had become an outsider in the last few months, just because you were in love with a muggleborn nobody would even tell you the password to get into the Slytherin dormitory, you had had to resort to very Slytherin methods to get the information you needed (blackmail and the occasional listening to conversations that you weren't invited to join) to even get you're books.

He looks at you again, that slight feeling in the pit of your stomach that lit up like a flame every time that you saw him lit up again. A smile graces his lips, a blush races across your cheeks, staining them bright red so bright that your reflection in the window looks like someone had fed it a pepper and not given it a glass of water. You hear a small chuckle from him and you want to become a puddle on the ground, subconsciously you play with the pendant that had been passed down your family for years.

"So... our final journey on this train, do you want to play chess?" he always knows what to say to make you smile, no matter how grumpy that you are. He pulls out his chess set from some hidden pocket on the inside of the muggle clothing he had put on just after you had lost sight of the castle, you had turned away and done the same thing after closing the blinds to the corridor and locking the door.

"White or Red?"

-0-

After four hours of playing chess and various other games such as exploding snap and miniature gobstones (you didn't know how he could fit it all into the pockets of his coat) the compartment door slid open as the train draws to a gradual stop.

Ted takes you by the hand and grabs you trunk down for you in one hand, you had owled his parents the bulk of your belonging in a shrunken format earlier on in the week. People hadn't liked your relationship and the chances that you got to get your things were ones that you had grasped with full enthusiasm and didn't regret - camping out in the room of requirement had been nice, but there was a chance that the other people in the school might get ahold of anything left lying in there during lessons.

Ted helps you move your trunk out of the compartment after everyone else has cleared away, you both take a moment to reflect on the times that you have had here, but you are swiftly moved on by one of the train staff, the driver (if your memories were correct). You step out onto the platform and are suddenly blazed in early summer sunlight. Blinking slightly you make your way over to where you can see Teddy's mother, a petite old lady with white hair and a walking stick, and she hugs you. Rather nimbly for a woman of her age, she grabs the trunk that you had by your side and whispers "I'll see you in a minute, I think Ted wants to talk to you about something."

You look at her face, her brown eyes are sparkling with something akin to mischief in them, she keeps on glancing over to where Ted was standing, promising some of his friends that they would keep in touch when they left the barrier and getting hugged by a rather overenthusiastic Gryffindor girl who looked like she was hugging a teddybear, one with a rather large grimace that kept on trying to get away. "Thank you Mrs Tonks."

You smile at the woman who suddenly looks stern "None of that now, I'm not that old and I would love it if you called me Katherine, it is my proper name after all, none of this 'Mrs' business, your practically family."

You beam at the lady and say "Of cause Mrs To-, I mean Katherine, I can't thank you enough for letting me stay with your fam-" Your voice fades away as a familiar smirk came up behind the old lady. "Out of the way you worthless Mudblood!" Your sister pushes past the old lady, sending her into the chest of a fifth year Hufflepuff boy who has his Hufflepuff scarf on despite the heat. She comes right up to where you are and gets right into your personal space.

"I would have thought Bella, that you could at least do us the decency to stay out of my way," you say, looking your older sister in the eye and giving her a tight grin "Unless of cause you have found a heart deep down in that black pit that you call your soul. If you're after a way of finding love well...I can't help you, I'm afraid. It's too deep down in your case, almost none existent."

You do love your older sister, really you do, your her spitting image. Once you two did get on, but the pure blood lunacy that had corrupted your parents had been driven deep into her heart in the years that you had been apart, making her little more then a slave to the dark lord, hell bent on following the orders as if they were her own wishes.

"What are you doing here Bella? There is nothing here for you now." You sneer down at your sister who is slightly smaller than you, you are about to go on but you feel a hand enter yours. Ted comes and stands next to you.

"Don't rise to it, you're better than ten of her."

"Isn't it cute, the blood traitor and the mudblood, don't you just love how he defends you sister, isn't he just the cutest thing that you'll ever see?" Bellatrix looks at you and stands on her tippy toes meaning that she is just over your hight, she leans in. Eyes dancing around the crowd of suddenly interested onlookers "Wouldn't it just be lovely if I killed him right here, right now?"

You wince slightly and Ted straightens up, you give his mother a look that says 'get out of here and go home, we'll be fine' and she nods and starts to slowly weave throughout the mass of intently watching wizards.

"But," Bella rounds off "That's not why I'm here, I'm here for something that belongs to me, that is mine. That you you disowned family less freak seem to have possession of." The is a whooping from some if the Slytherine onlookers.

Bella leans in closely and picks up the chain around your neck, "This chain belonged to the first black family's daughter, she passed it onto her favourite niece and so on and so on, you were marked as the special one when she gave you this!" Bella yanked the chain and it gave, the pendant glowed slightly greener in the sunlight.

"You really think that we would let you keep it?" Bella's furious rambling went on for a little bit, entrancing her audience bar you and Ted. "Traitor...Making out with a mudblood and calling him your 'boyfriend'...I always knew that you were the rotten apple of the bunch."

"What's going on here?" A saving voice comes from the other side of the wall of people "Honestly you lot, I would have thought that you would have all gone home by now?"

A redheaded young woman comes though the crowd. She stops short of you sister, whose rants cut off sharply. It takes you a moment to recognise the lady, it's Molly Weasley, the one who got married last year to Arnald- no, Arthur Weasley. She looks at your sister with something kin to both amusement and annoyance. "Bellatrix, don't make me call the aurors, they generally don't like it when someone starts harassing students!"

Bella looks at her with disdain clearly showing on her face, you hear her mutter "Band of blood traitors," under her breath. But she backs off slightly with an added note "Your belonging have been burned at home Andromeda, we didn't want your madness to pass onto anybody else." She smirks and walks off. The crowd quickly disperses.

You hear Molly mutter "I swear, one day I'll get her!" You reach to the back of your neck where the chain used to pass around your neck, without the weight of the pendant you feel lighter somehow. Not at all sad that its gone, perhaps, you think, it was another thing that you would have only just got rid of when you got around to it. Molly comes up to you "Have a good term?"

You don't really know Molly an the conversation that followed the argument was full of awkward silences and forced small talk. Molly however, promptly invites the two of you for tea the following Sunday which you are both compelled to accept (with the invitation in the end being increased to Ted's mother and father as well as just you two). She explains that she was on the platform looking out for Arthur's brother Billious (who had brushed her off and gone to the pub with some 'mates').

You as quickly as possible make your way to the barrier, but then Ted pulls you back. "Don't you want to remember this feeling, this moment? We're stepping into the rest of our lives here."

You laugh, but you let him pull you back for a minute longer "Listen," he says "There's a cafe down the road that I think perhaps we should go to, there's something that I want to ask you and it's important. Very, very important."

You feel slightly worried and it must show on your face as he suddenly leans over and kisses you. It's not your first kiss and at that very moment you realise that you don't want it to be your last. The two of you stand like that for a little bit longer and then you break apart. You realise that the platform is now empty. You looks up at his face, he goes to say something and then stops himself "Wait till we get to the cafe." Is all that he says. And with one last, long, look around at the train and the platform you hold onto his hand and move on.

Not caring that there was a war brewing.

Not caring that you might never talk to your family again.

It was alright.

Because you had him to fight alongside.

-fin-

* * *

Yay... I was worried that it wasn't going to be posted tonight but my iPod came to the rescue (now my Ipad is getting a talking too and a slap on the wrists)


End file.
